The Naval Intelligence Division (NID) was the intelligence arm of the BritishAdmiralty before the establishment of a unified Defence Staff in 1965. It dealt with matters concerning British naval plans, with the collection of naval intelligence. It was also known as "Room 39," after its room number at the Admiralty.[1]

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The Foreign Intelligence Committee was established in 1882, and renamed the Naval Intelligence Department in 1887. Its first head was Captain William Henry Hall; William Reginald Hall, who was Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) during World War I, was his son.

The NID staff were originally responsible for fleet mobilization and war plans as well as foreign intelligence collection; thus in the beginning there were originally two divisions: (1) intelligence (Foreign) and (2) Mobilization. In 1900 another division, War, was added to deal with issues of strategy and defence, and in 1902 a fourth division, Trade, was created for matters related to the protection of merchant shipping. The Trade Division was abolished in 1909 in the wake of the Committee of Imperial Defence inquiry into the feud between the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher and former Commander-in-Chief Channel Fleet, Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, when it was discovered that the captain heading the Trade Division had been supplying the latter with confidential information during the inquiry.

In 1910, the NID was shorn of its responsibility for war planning and strategy when the outgoing Fisher created the Navy War Council as a stop-gap remedy to criticisms emanating from the Beresford Inquiry that the Navy needed a naval staff—a role the NID had been in fact fulfilling since at least 1900, if not earlier. After this reorganisation, war planning and strategic matters were transferred to the newly created Naval Mobilisation Department and the NID reverted to the position it held prior to 1887—an intelligence collection and collation organisation.

The importance of the NID early on was recognized to a degree that by 1902, no issue within the Royal Navy was decided, no matter how trivial, without the NID having its say on the matter.

Naval Ultra messages were handled differently from Army and Air Force Ultra because the Admiralty was an operational HQ and could give orders during a battle; while the Imperial General Staff (Army) and Air Staff would give commanders general orders say to "clear the enemy out of Africa" without telling him how to do it. Hence verbartim translations of naval decodes were sent by Hut 4 to the NID and nowhere else (except for some naval intelligence sent directly from Bletchley Park to Commanders-in-Chief in the Mediterranean).[2]

Hut 8 which decrypted Enigma messages for Hut 4 to translate and analyse had less information for Ultra as the Kriegsmarine operated Enigma more securely than the German Army and Air Force. Hut 4 also broke various hand cyphers and some Italian naval traffic.